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Head-mounted home cinema still a stupid idea
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The latest doomed attempt to mount a virtual cinema atop the heads of geeks everywhere comes from the oddly named Mikimoto Beans of Japan. Its iTheaterV will be available there next month for ¥39,800 ($320).

Similar to systems we’ve seen before, the iTheaterV takes video from the source and displays it on two tiny LCDs in a pair of glasses to create the illusion of looking at a much larger screen. The virtual display is said to be a 65in screen at a distance of 2.5m.

Another approach Mikimoto Beans has in common with other hawkers of head-mounted displays is its desire to piggyback on the success of the iPod - a cable and converter are included for hooking up to video from Apple’s leviathan.

With a battery life of four to five hours and a weight of just 70g, the iTheaterV is clearly a well-engineered product - it’s just a shame that the concept of watching video inside a pair of glasses is so fundamentally flawed as to be little more than a novelty.

(Crossposted to Tech.co.uk)

01:56 AM Mark Hiratsuka • Permalink
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